While the folding of the Southern Kings was expected in the face of the relentless ravaging of their purse strings by Covid-19, the passing of the great rugby administrator Monde Tabata wasn’t.
Since I regarded him as a parent, our working relationship often had a father/son element to it. He loved his sport, not just rugby, and the infirm rugby administration terrain in the Eastern Cape was always a problem for him.
In one of our most recent conversations he lamented how the Eastern Cape’s different rugby interest groups seldom came together for a common cause. It’s that lack of unified drive that ultimately led to the Southern Kings’ demise.
There are fingers pointed at SA Rugby’s perceived lack of fiduciary duty in looking after the franchise while the successive entities in the Eastern Province Rugby Union and the Greatest Rugby Company in the Whole Wide World (GRC) took turns in providing an example of not how to run a business.
Sport is a business and like most businesses it wasn’t going to be spared from Covid-19’s withering effects. With their shaky financial foundation, the Kings were always going to be on a hiding to nothing.
Covid-19 laid waste to the most sturdy of business plans and with rugby’s finances always skirting the thin side, badly managed teams were always going to be the first to suffer. Mine isn’t to poke holes at what remains of the dilapidated Kings’ stable, but their demise has cut deep.
At best, Eastern Province is a makeweight Currie Cup first-division outfit, while the real talent lies with the tertiary institutions that participate in the Varsity Shield and Varsity Cup.
It’s the hope and dreams of so many Eastern Capers who’ve hardly had a team to call their own. I remember the ructions around the formation of the Southern Spears around 2005 or 2006, but when they hosted the Lions in East London around that time, it was a big deal. East London hadn’t seen Super Rugby since 1999. As things stand, the Buffalo City Municipal Metro Stadium may not see it again.
The Kings may have played most of their rugby out of Port Elizabeth, but when they finally put it together in the 2017 season, they weren’t only 11th out of 18 teams and ahead of the Bulls and Cheetahs, but had storied wins against the Bulls and the Sharks.
Deon Davids, who has been absorbed by the Springbok set-up, knew what he had there and made it work.
When Lionel Cronje, a Queen’s College schoolboy star turned professional discard who washed up at the Kings, landed that match-winning 81st-minute penalty, I momentarily discarded my job and celebrated that win.
It meant everything to me to watch the crown jewel of Eastern Cape rugby take a chunk off the much-vaunted Bulls. One Makazole Mapimpi scored the game’s opening try for the Kings. We all know what he did at 2019’s successful Rugby World Cup assault in Japan.
We wanted the Kings to succeed. We needed the Kings to succeed and they didn’t. At best, Eastern Province is a makeweight Currie Cup first-division outfit, while the real talent lies with the tertiary institutions that participate in the Varsity Shield and Varsity Cup. There’s no Border provincial side to help cushion players coming through from the schools, Walter Sisulu University and the University of Fort Hare.
At first glance this could look like a convenient player bottleneck, but EPRU neither have the money nor the resources to house these players.
Such is the decrepit nature of Eastern Cape sport; it’s worth remembering the Premier Soccer League club, Chippa United, was transplanted from Cape Town. There’s also no representation in the GladAfrica championship (the National First Division), while the Warriors, as gamely as they compete in franchise cricket, have resigned themselves to routinely losing their best players.
There was a good thing in the Kings, but it wasn’t treated well and it came to an end. This isn’t the way “Bhut’ Monde” would’ve loved things to transpire. A big tree has fallen, taking its shade and roots while the dreams of many have also died. It’s painful.
